I thought this was a joke but it seems like it’s actually legit. WoW, which has a subscription and paid expansions, just added a $90 item to their store. This is Korean MMO levels of absurdity. What do you think of this?
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It’s actually more insidious. Blizzard facilitates gold buying by being a middle man. 30 days of wow subscription is $15. Blizzard sells a $20 wow token. Buyers of the token automatically sell it in game to players for gold. Players who sell their In game gold can redeem the token for game time or $15 Blizzard bucks, which can buy any virtual item in the Blizzard store. Games, expansions, and mounts such as this.
If you don’t want to spend $90 in real life, you can sell your gold for 6 tokens for $90 Blizzard bucks and get the mount.
The token has been hovering around $170k all month and now it spiked to almost $360k (token price tracker). So now cash buyers can get way more gold for their bucks, and the 6 tokens exchanged for gold (to buy the mount) will net Blizzard $120.
I’ve known about the gold tokens system, it has made sense as a way to invalidate black market gold sellers, equalizing WoW gold against the US Dollar. Still don’t quite understand why the token would now sell for 170k though…? Unless you didn’t mean to use the dollar symbol.
They probably meant 170k gold in-game
Also what they haven’t said is that the price is set by players of the game,. When someone buys a WoW token and exchanges it for gold, that’s because a player has paid them with gold they earned for the token. These tokens can be then used to pay for your monthly subscription.
You are correct. Token value is decided by players on the auction house, not Blizzard, though I’m sure someone will argue that they are capable of manipulating the AH and therefore they are driving it up
They are capable of it, but I don’t really see why they would. Making the tokens cost more gold would mean less people willing to buy them on the AH and therefore less people selling tokens. I think the prices have just exploded because of the mount releasing. As someone else mentioned on here, I believe Blizzard just sets a minimum price for tokens.
Those amounts aren’t USD yeah, probably habit when writing down money. The 170k and 360k figures are the WoW virtual currency aka “gold”.
There is a floor to WoW token’s gold value from what I recall (it’s been years since I interacted with Blizzard and WoW) but no ceiling.
Dunno how hard it curbed bots/unsanctioned gold sellers/fascist scum grassroots campaigns (no, really, look into Stephen Bannon and WoW gold it’s so fucking stupid) but!
Blizzard absolutely realized and then moved to take all the money that was being left on the table from 3rd party virtual currency sales, and they apply every measure and analytical tool to maximize that profit because of course.
This mount’s release is literally them inflating the price of the virtual currency ahead of real life earnings calls, because it absolutely will sell and give them the revenue infusion that the WoW token’s rise in value is meant to provide for as long as they want until it’s time to pump the numbers again with another mount/high sought store item.
A very similar variant in form and function to this mount was once available in-game and trade able with a rarity tuned that it ended up being sold for the WoW Token equivalent of ~$500 at the prices at the time, as there was no store version or similar option elsewhere.
It’s no accident that when the price of the WoW Token is at its lowest, here comes a slightly updated and dolled up version of that same highly sought mount version.
WoW is where real economics, car ownership culture, hoarding, and dopamine treadmills collide and Blizzard doesn’t just know this but have it charted on 5 year plans.
At least it’s not Star Citizen prices:
What the fuck? Do people actually pay that for virtual bullshit? That’s like the price of a used Honda!
There’s also a pack containing every ship they’ve sold which you can only see/purchase if you’ve spent one thousand dollars in their ship store. I’ll spoiler the price so you can try and guess how much it is first:
spoiler
$48,000, not counting the $1000 you have to spend to be able to see it.
Edit: I should include the source for that price since (as mentioned) you can’t even see the pack until you’ve dropped $1k
More like Scam Citizen.
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I saw people being mad not because they are selling a 90$ mount, but because now everyone can just have it instead of grinding 5 million gold lol.
Showing off is an important part of social MMOs. If anyone can have the really cool looking thing for some cash then what’s the point of grinding? For a hardcore player, what do they have to show off their prestige?
It’s pretty important for an MMO to respect its most active players. Not to mention, what do new players have to look up to? To think, what do I have to get that? If the answer is “oh I just have to fork out some dough”. That’s kinda disappointing
It’s pretty important for an MMO to respect its most active players
WoW chased them off years ago. They cater towards casual players now, and don’t want the lifers.
I’m not particularly active, but I still left for OSRS a long time ago
What a load of nonsense. Wows endgame raids and dungeons are the best and most active of any MMO available and those are exclusively for the active players
Access to raids and gearing for success in those raids is easier now than ever before. Just getting access to a raid used to be a time consuming endeavor. Do you remember attunement? Or leveling lock picking on your rogue for a week so you could circumvent a key that was unavailable? Or finding a 5 person group who was able and willing to complete a dungeon and then traveling through hostile territory to get to the entrance? All of that is gone. It’s gone because they hope to entice more casual players, despite the fact that those things were challenging, and fun, and added a lot of uniqueness to each person’s abilities and experiences.
What? FF14 is currently running laps around wow’s sub numbers, wow hasn’t been the most active MMO available since before bfa and the bootlicking cratered it.
I’d really love to know where you are getting your numbers from. I find it hard to believe that the game where the last expansion is tanking in the review score as compared to prior expansions is beating wow
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not…
I’m not. People keep saying FF14 but neither reports their numbers…
Edit: But the parsing sites such as warcraft logs and ff logs all clearly indicate WoW is more active.
FFXIV definitely has the edge in the gooner crowd though.
That is so untrue lol
End game content - the stuff that “makes” wow - is tuned for active players, not casuals. They are catering to casual players in a way that doesn’t significantly affect hardcore players…unless you think there should be huge barriers of entry to the most basic things?
I’m more surprised that this game is still running. I haven’t heard of anyone playing it in years.
I quit after they fraudulently charged me a 6 month subscription renewal and then refused to refund it for months because no customer service reps anymore, and then the next expansion had paid early access for a huge paywall. It’s a total scam now
I had jumped back in when tbc classic was released. I wound up on a dead server. It made end game content essentially impossible. I was hoping to move right into wotlk classic at release as that was my jam back in the day. Except they weren’t going to include the dungeon finder or cross realm groups meaning it would still be a dead server with no chance at end game content. I was done with pointlessly dumb leadership. Unsubbed and found a private server that hits all the right buttons.
There’s a few at work who have admitted to still playing. Blizzard owes a lot to the very concrete social structures built around the game.
It’s one of those games I’ve always been interested in trying, but the idea of paying a subscription for a videogame makes me uncomfortable for some reason.
It should have been a flying whale.
Like the lunar whale from FFXIV? What a waste of 40.
I’m a former player, but played continuously from release for 11 years. This is undoubtedly ridiculously expensive, but the convenience of having your mail and auction house anywhere in the world - the value to certain players is immense. I think if I played still today, it would probably be a struggle deciding whether this limited time offering was worth jumping on - I certainly don’t need it even a little bit, but when I want it, this thing would be incredibly convenient to have. Maybe that would just be the addiction talking. But when you spend all your free time with one game, you do feel a sense of good value relative to things like drinks at the bar or a movie or buying 1 or 2 full priced games a month.
But truly, the utility this provides for you and your guild is immense and impossible to replicate. They definitely shouldn’t be selling mounts on the shop for $90. That’s fucked. But compared to some of the video game devs selling weapon or character skins for as much or more, there IS at least a unique value proposition to the player. I guarantee there will be people with it the second it releases, for better or worse.
On the up side, it’s now very, VERY easy to tell who is an idiot in the main hub cities within 10 seconds of the auction house.
A lot of people have been playing this game for over a decade and have hundreds of millions of gold. This thing is currently 2 million gold
Ok so I cackled when I saw the price on this thing but the more I thought about it, the less shitty it is. FWIW I am not a WoW lifer or Blizzard apologist. I got talked into Classic for a year then played a month or two of each expansion since before quitting but I know the background of the story. It looks way worse from an outsider perspective.
You could buy the original auction house mount for 5 million gold back in the day. It stopped being available regularly and now it’s available occasionally in the “black market auction house” and it always sells for the maximum bid.
To combat Chinese gold farmers, Blizzard started selling gold in a bit of a roundabout way. For $20, you can buy a WoW token to sell on the auction house. This token can be purchased by a player and traded for 1 month of game time. Some players dont pay a dime to play - gold is not hard to acquire.
When this new mount came out, WoW tokens were worth about 200k gold. You’d need to exchange them for 5 tokens to get this mount. 1/5 of the original price.
Now tokens are worth 330k. 1.65m golf. STILL significantly cheaper than it was originally.
Tokens will need to rise to triple in price to match the original cost which will still be a tiny fraction of what it cost a month ago.
By far the shittiest thing about this - and I think the only real reason to complain - is that the rising value of the token hurts players who pay for the subscription purely with gold as it adds a few hours to their “working” time in game. For context, watching TV and semi-afk farming will get you like 50k/hour. You can earn way, way more if you’ve leveled up a profession.
The other (not so bad) thing I don’t like about it is that…I hate those mounts. They’re HUGE and people just AFK on them blocking NPCs I want to talk to.
The other (not so bad) thing I don’t like about it is that…I hate those mounts. They’re HUGE and people just AFK on them blocking NPCs I want to talk to.
TFW the year is 2024 AD and blizzard still has not properly addressed this
Important NPCs have a dismount aura but if they have that to any NPC with dialogue, you’d get dismounted a hundred times a day
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Even if that didn’t come with a bunch of annoying downsides, how would that solve the problem better than dismount auras?
Oh yeah, I actually remember that from the last time I relapsed (Legion). I was wondering if I hallucinated that workaround… But it’s still just that : a stupid workaround. It baffles me that it is seemingly impossible for them to implement a keybind that targets the nearest “interactive” npc in range
There is, the Interact With Target and Soft Target settings
Hmmm, okay. Added in dragonflight, apparently.
Well I guess I can finally shut up about this incredibly minor issue
To combat Chinese gold farmers, Blizzard started selling gold in a bit of a roundabout way. For $20, you can buy a WoW token to sell on the auction house. This token can be purchased by a player and traded for 1 month of game time. Some players dont pay a dime to play - gold is not hard to acquire.
Eve Online has been doing that since 2008.
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That thing is still earnable every so often in game if you catch it on the black market
It is literally earnable in game lol
You can sell gold straight to Blizzard. Even at 360k per token, this is WAY CHEAPER than it was when it was originally introduced for 5 million gold
You can not sell gold to Blizzard
Edit: I stand corrected, you can purchase tokens and turn them into game time, but I didn’t know they could be turned into $15 battle net balance. This mount does, indeed, cost less gold than the original Brutosaur (or did before token prices skyrocketed)
Blizzard is scum
It’s going to sell like crazy. It’s not just that it’s a Mount, but it also has an auction house and mailbox that you can use anywhere at any time. The only other mount that has the AH is no longer attainable regularly, only on rare occasions for gold cap.
I am going to get it, but I’m going to use my gold in game to convert to bnet balance.
I was going to say who cares if they’re selling a mount skin, but if on-the-go access to the auction house and mailbox isn’t normally accessible, this seems shitty.
The thing is, they won’t be able to sell a Mount like this again in the future. This is kind of a “break glass” type of situation.
It’s one of the most overhyped things in the game. I can more than afford it (both through $$ and in-game currency) but I just do not care. There’s easy to get mailboxes and the auction house is in every main city now.
Not to mention the amount of people who have the original auction house mount and the influx of people with this one - it is barely a convenience.
I think it’s a terrible decision because of this. The whole point of hubs is to get players together and interacting. Putting AH and mail around hubs requires many players together. Giving folks a mount means the hubs stop being hubs and contributes to the continued decay of the multiplayer aspect.
Take this with a grain of salt. When I last played hubs still mattered. If that isn’t currently the case this is just old fart complaints.
They’ll keep doing this because dipshits keep paying for it. Blame the whales.
They should abandon all pretenses of restraint and just add a literal whale mount for $500
Square Enix literally has this in FFXIV and it’s half of what Blizzard wants for their mount ($42 USD). And at least the FFXIV whale mount has in-world lore history and isn’t just an overt cash grab.
If it’s not cosmetic then it’s absolutely a cash grab.
the cybertruck of mounts.
